In the mean time the resistance made by a powerful Hindoo Zemindar, or landholder, who possessed the town and fort of _Hatrass_, in the province of Agra, occasioned the regiment once more to take the field in India, in the beginning of 1817. This Zemindar was named Dyaram; during the troubles in the province of Agra, he only paid his rents when threatened with a large military force, and in the year 1803, when the country between the rivers Jumna and Ganges, called the Dooab, was taken possession of by the British, he expressed himself willing to pay his assessment, but objected to any interference in what he called his territory. This was not agreed to, but he was not then molested. His refusing to acknowledge the authority of the civil law, afterwards rendered it necessary to bring him to obedience by force of arms, and he had the presumption to defy the British power. To reduce this refractory Zemindar, a body of troops was placed under Major-General Sir Dyson Marshall, and the first battalion of the FOURTEENTH Regiment took part in the enterprise. The fortified town of Hatrass was reputed of great strength, and when the troops arrived before it, in February, 1817, some inquiry was made respecting the depth of the ditch, which a soldier of the FOURTEENTH, volunteered to ascertain, and fastening a large stone to the end of a cord, he proceeded alone after dark, and gained the necessary information, with a cool intrepidity, exposed to such great danger, as created great surprise. The fire of the batteries soon forced the town to submit, when it was taken possession of by Lieutenant-Colonel Watson, and the FOURTEENTH; but the castle held out several days; at length the principal magazine exploded, and during the following night the refractory Dyaram escaped at the head of a hundred horsemen all in complete armour. The castle was afterwards taken possession of without opposition; and this was followed by the submission of all the zemindars of the Dooab. After the performance of this service the FOURTEENTH returned to Cawnpore, where they remained several months. The second battalion embarked from Cephalonia in the autumn of this year, and proceeded to Malta, where it remained a few days. The peace of Europe appearing to be established upon a firm basis, a reduction in the army took place, which occasioned the second battalion to receive orders to return to England for the purpose of being disbanded; it landed at Portsmouth on the 24th and 25th of November, and was reduced at Chichester on the 23rd of December, transferring four hundred and twenty rank and file to the first battalion. [Sidenote: 1818]